Is there a social norms perspective in the birth registration challenge in Angola? Yolanda T. Nunes CorreiaUNICEF/Angola12 July 2013

Presentation outline

• Context and challenge

• Is there a social norm perspective?

• Social expectations

• Gap between legal norm and social norm

• The work done so far…

• Change (or improvement) in practices

Context and Challenge

• Africa’s fastest growing economy (oil production)

• 37% of 18 million Angolans below poverty line (US$1.75/Day)

• Deep inequality in the access to essential services, knowledge, commodities

• 30 years of war

• 2002 peace settlement

• Slow progress, but steady

• Political and legal commitments

Birth registration in Angola • 31% U-5 registered

• With the war:• official buildings and civil registration filing system destroyed• countless displaced population lost their identity papers• newly born children could not be registered

• Since the peace agreement: • birth registration campaigns conducted• however, there is a long way to go before reaching universal

birth registration to all newly born children; as well as to those who were missed by the system, who now might be adolescents, young adults, parents…

Context and Challenge

Bottlenecks

• Lack of awareness of importance and procedures of birth registration

• Distance

• Costs

• Lack of preparation to provide all necessary info, such as the child’s name

• Lack of parents’ ID documents

• Father unknown

• Home births (estimated at 51%)

• Complexity of the process

• Logistics

• Lack of human resources

Context and Challenge

Is there a Social Norms Perspective?

• Yes, but…not (yet) the key answer to the issue in Angola

• BR services, quality human resources….should be available (decentralization)

• BR diagnosis and community-led prioritization needed• qualitative surveys• individual interviews• focus groups

Is there a Social Norms Perspective?

Focus of this analytical process

The lack of preparation of parents to provide all necessary information to register the child at birth, specifically on the choice of name

Is there a Social Norms Perspective? Normative personal belief Despite the information provided on the relevance of

birth registration and the existence of new behavior patterns, some parents prefer not to register their child during the first year of life because they believe that a child should not be named before completing a certain age (bad luck)

Empirical expectations Parents expect other parents to not register their child before following traditional rites

Normative expectations The parents prefer to comply with the tradition because they firmly believe that the elders, other family and community members expect them to follow the tradition of giving spiritual names from a relative who have already deceased

Is there a Social Norms Perspective?

• Challenging to tackle the social norm of not naming the child during the first year of live due to the parent’s social preference that takes into consideration what the elders and other community members think

• Lack of legal sanction for not registering the child (only late registration fee for children older than five)

• More information needed:• to understand where the resistance is • what are the other motivations behind this attitude • what are the causal influence of naming a child and his/her wellbeing

Is there a Social Norms Perspective?

• Depending on the findings….

• the option could be separating the process of naming from the act of registering the child

• For this to succeed; • there should be a shift in people’s belief of what birth registration really is• a clear understanding of why it is important for the parents to register their

child• why the government needs to proceed with the registration

Is there a Social Norms Perspective?

• The population should be approached on its own terms without disrupting the value given to the process of naming, but capitalizing on it.

• The positive aspect that can be capitalized on is the fact that parents want the best for their children.

• An intervention to shape parents’ decision to register their child based on their inner will of being good parents, trying to convince them that birth registration will provide an additional protection to their child.

Gap between legal norm and social norm

• Angola is progressing well in terms of legal environment creation for birth registration, but not enough...

• The legal norm of registering the child at birth is far from the current social norm of (in some cases) registering a child after following certain cultural rites

• In order to bridge the gap between the legal norm and the social norm “outside the box” solutions should be taken into consideration by the government and its partners, such as delinking the initial birth registration process from the naming process

The work done so far… • Campaigns…weak monitoring…not sustainable

• Organized diffusion strategy was conducted through the media (radio spots, TV and print media). At community level edutainment was used in the form of theatre groups.

• Since 2011, more long term and organized diffusion, through the communication for development programme on family competencies. It should be more evidence-based and community-led.

• Advocacy for change in law and policy – positive result

Change (or improvement) in practices

• The organised diffusion strategy is still the most relevant; however it needs to be improved

• Persistency and consistency are key for the success of the implementation of the revised strategy

• The diagnosis and community-led prioritization should be more systematic within a realistic period of time

• The monitoring and evaluation should be improved by involving more the community

• The messages and the slogan should be designed in a participatory manner

• The communication activities (including community theatre) and materials should be designed according to the core group needs and context (pre-test for greater efficacy)

Change (or improvement) in practices• The strategic focus of the organized diffusion will be translated into a

communication, social mobilization and behavioural change communication strategy incorporating:

• advocacy (aiming at UNICEF colleagues, key government officials, traditional and religious leaders)

• social mobilization (through capacity building of community activists, traditional birth attendants, other organized groups at community level)

• media relations (syndicate of journalists and the association of women journalists)

• Behavioural change communication (across all core groups)

Change (or improvement) in practices• For the success of organised diffusion, the mapping of core groups and

the network analysis should be conducted

• The following groups will be unavoidable, due to their influence in the parents’ lives:

• traditional leaders (Sobas)

• religious leaders

• community activists (including from religious groups)

• traditional birth attendants

• journalists associations (syndicate of journalists and the association of women journalists)

Change (or improvement) in practices• To be more effective:• The organized diffusion should be based on successful cases

(document the process and impact of the communication and social mobilization strategies implementation in one or two selected communities or municipalities)

• The effective community/municipal engagement might lead to a public commitment to register their children before completing one-year old

• The visibility of positive results might encourage others to take similar steps (“success breeds success”)

• It’s important to identify positive deviants to be used for visibility and as source of knowledge of why these parents (around 17%) registered their children before completing one year old

Thank you!